Sarah put her hand to her mouth and staggered back a few paces before turning to run back to the house.
Part two
10
Judging by the expressions of delight and surprise when the captain announced that it was a clear and sunny day in Manchester, with a temperature of fifty degrees, Californians had just as many illusions about the English weather as the Brits had about theirs. Either that or global warming was messing everything up. No one took off their jackets, though; fifty was still too cold for an Angeleno in December.
As Sarah had a British passport, she avoided the long line at immigration. Her one large suitcase, packed with Christmas presents, arrived quickly at the carousel, and though one of the officers gave her a second glance when she walked through the “Nothing to Declare’ exit, it wasn’t because he thought she was smuggling something in.
The airport was noisy with the clamor of waiting relatives. Sarah’s plane had arrived at the same time as a Jamaican flight, which explained the colorful costumes and the steel band. Here to greet a visiting dignitary or a sports team, she guessed.
She stood by the barrier holding on to her pushcart and scanned the crowd for Paula. There she was, waving both arms in the air behind a group of Indian women in colorful saris.
Sarah pushed forward, muttering excuse-mes as she went. The arrivals concourse was so crowded that it was impossible to get through without bumping into people. She almost ran over a small child and earned a dirty look for catching an elderly woman a glancing blow on the shin before she reached Paula. They hugged briefly, then Paula pushed Sarah back to arm’s-length and examined her.
“Let’s have a look at you, then, our Sal.”
The broad Yorkshire accent came as a shock to Sarah, though she didn’t know why it should. She had spoken that way herself once, but now it sounded awkward and primitive to her, the mark of a certain class. She felt embarrassed for thinking such thoughts and cursed the English class system for always leaving its mark, no matter what you achieved. Had she been born to the upper classes and bred for success, Sarah thought bitterly, she wouldn’t always be so consumed by self-doubt and lack of confidence, wouldn’t always feel the bubble was about to burst.
“Well,” said Paula, “I must say it’s a big improvement on the last time.”
“What is?”
“Don’t you remember? The make-up, the frizzy hair, the leather?”
Sarah laughed. “Oh. Yes, of course.” She didn’t remember, though, which was hardly surprising given the condition she had been in during her last visit home. That was before California, before the U.S. tour with Gary and his band, but it wasn’t before the drugs and the drinking; though she hadn’t recognized it immediately, the craziness had already begun. She didn’t remember anything very clearly about that period of her life. Nor did she wish to.
This time she was wearing stonewashed jeans and a red sweatshirt, carrying her quilted down coat of many colors over her arm, and her blond hair was trimmed neat and short. She also wore no makeup, a real treat after having the stuff plastered on every day at the studio.
“Mind you,” Paula went on. “You could do with putting a bit of meat on your bones. Have you been slimming and going to one of them health club places like they do in Hollywood?”
Sarah laughed. “I run every morning on the beach, but that’s about all.” In fact, only yesterday morning I stumbled across a dismembered body, she almost added, but stopped herself in time. No point getting into that with Paula. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s illegal to sell fatty foods in California.”
“Is it?”
“Only kidding. Though sometimes you’d think so.”
“Well, you looked a bit better padded last time I saw you on television. How long ago did you make that programme?”
“Not long. Television puts at least ten pounds on you, didn’t you know that?”
“How would I? I’ve never been on telly. I’m not the star in the family.”
“I just thought people knew, that’s all,” Sarah said. “Anyway, I hope I don’t look that fat on the series.”
“I didn’t say fat did I? Just a bit better padded.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Anyway, I suppose you look healthy enough,” Paula went on. “Though for the life of me, I can’t see where you’re hiding your tan.”
“Which way?”
Paula pointed and Sarah started pushing the cart through the throng. “I don’t tan well,” she said. “I never did. You know that. The sun just burns me.” Besides, she might have added, the studio prefers my “porcelain’ complexion; they say it goes with the plummy Brit accent.
“Well, pardon me for mentioning it.”
Sarah laughed. Same old Paula, prickly as a cactus, quick to take offense when none was intended.
Finally, they arrived at the car park and found the red Nissan.
“Unless you’ve learned to drive since you were last here, love,” Paula said, “I’d try the other side.”
Sarah blushed. “Sorry.” She’d gone automatically to the driver’s side. She got in the correct side and fastened her seat belt. “How was the drive over?” she asked.
Paula lit a cigarette and breathed a sigh of relief. “Not bad. Roadworks near Barton bridge and an accident just past Huddersfield, but other than that... ” She negotiated her way out of the car park, refusing Sarah’s offer of money to pay the man in the booth, and headed for the motorway. “It’s a bloody maze round here,” she muttered.
The car felt cramped and tinny to Sarah after Stuart’s gigantic hunk of Detroit steel. She wriggled around in the seat to get comfortable, but still the roof was too near to her head and the windshield too close to her face. Cars made her more nervous than planes, which was one reason why she had never learned to drive. The smoke made her cough.
“All right?” Paula cast her a sideways glance.
“Yes, fine.”
“I’ll open the window if you want.”
“No, it’s all right.”
“Really. I don’t mind. It’s no trouble.”
“Well, maybe just an inch or so.”
Paula opened the window a crack and pretended to shiver. The draft blew the smoke right into Sarah’s face.
“Shit!” Paula missed a turning and went around the roundabout again. Sarah thought of the little roundabout in Venice, one of the few she had seen in the United States. She felt a momentary pang of homesickness for her beach house. It was the only place where she had felt truly at home in years, perhaps because it was where she had started putting her life back together after Gary.
But thinking of the house also brought to mind a fleeting image of the severed arm and the heart in the sand. Then she remembered the letter she had slipped in her luggage, unopened. She had found it when she dropped by the house with Stuart to pack — at the last minute, as usual — before going to the airport.
She looked out of the window and saw a local diesel train rattling along beside a canal. Two boys stood on the stone banks leaning over the water with fishing nets. She doubted they had much hope of catching anything there in December, mild as it was. A yellow sign showing a man digging with a shovel appeared by the side of the road, then another. Soon the motorway was reduced to two lanes and they were crawling along between a silver Peugeot and a juggernaut from Barcelona. But there were no men digging with shovels.